Three times lucky for seasoned campaigner

Page Tools

Russell Broadbent, the only Victorian Liberal to lose his seat in 1998, drinks to the future as the new member for McMillan in South Gippsland.Photo: Wayne Taylor

Russell Broadbent knows what it is like to be the odd man out. In the 1998 election he was the only Victorian Liberal to lose his seat. "You sure learn who your real friends are, he said."

Now the tables are turned, the man who beat him then for the seat of McMillan, Labor's Christian Zahra, was the only Victorian Labor member to be thrown out this election. Mr Broadbent, however, is on his way back to Canberra for the third time.

After a redistribution that took the seat from marginal Labor, to 2.9 per cent marginal Liberal, Mr Broadbent stacked on another 2 per cent including significant swings in traditional Labor areas such as Moe and Newborough.

"I know how Christian will feel; he'll be doing it tough," Mr Broadbent said. "He'll need a lot of support from his friends and family."

Mr Broadbent believes he is only the fifth person in Australian parliamentary history to be elected a third time, after losing twice before. He was first elected in 1990 to the nearby seat of Corinella, only to be beaten in 1993 by Labor's Alan Griffin, now a frontbencher.

Mr Zahra was yesterday perplexed by his loss, having gained a primary vote swing of almost 1 per cent towards him. But it was not enough to overcome the new margin and he also fared badly on preferences.

"It was hard, there was a field of 10 candidates, but in some small booths, I picked up a swing of 20 per cent towards me," Mr Zahra said.

Mr Broadbent thinks this is where his opponent went wrong. He feels that in trying to gain support from people who did not traditionally support Labor, such as dairy farmers, Mr Zahra neglected his traditional base. He says this partly explains the swing to the Liberals in previously rusted-on Labor areas.

But he believes there was one other important factor that got him over the line. "I have been told we were doing badly until . . . Latham announced his forestry plan in Tasmania. This is a blue-collar area and Latham's policy in Tasmania, trading jobs for trees, offended every working person, every self-employed tradesman. As soon as he made that announcement, things turned around for us here."

Mr Broadbent believes the State Government gave him another free kick by supporting wind farms for the South Gippsland coast, a former National Party stronghold that came into the electorate with the redistribution. "The wind farm business has really angered a lot of people and when Kelvin Thomson (Opposition environment spokesman) last week came out in support of them, that was another blow to Labor's vote."

Unlike his opponent, who on election day spread himself around the main polling booths in the most populous parts of the electorate, Mr Broadbent spent most of the day in the Pakenham area.

It is an area where the Federal Government's campaign on interest rate rises was likely to have an impact. It is where he lives and when his family first opened its men's wear business decades ago, it was a sleepy country town.

Now it is teeming with housing growth as Melbourne families are pushed further out to find affordable places to live. The centre of town seems to be bursting as it copes with the four-wheel-drives of aspirational voters.

Why did he spend all his time in the one spot? "When Alan Griffin beat me in 1993 he spent the whole of election day at one booth in Cranbourne. He only needed to win 400 votes and in the end the margin was about 900. I learned from him you can pick up undecided votes by just being there."